Best Practices: PTO Time in Work Front?

[AmyRa]

Best Practices: PTO Time in Work Front

[AmyRa]

Hi Everyone, I want to start having the team enter their PTO time in Work Front. The timelines will automatically update to skip the day off if the person is assigned to the task. This will help us assign work when we build projects. I am having a hard time to deciding what the best practice is for when people are entering PTO time in at different points in the year, and this is changing current projects which is changing the drop date. Are there any easy ways to report on these changes so project owners can reassign the task to another team member, or make adjustments to fix the drop date? Thank you for your help, Amy Rapoza

[EricLu2]

{{Amy}} Um, no. If you search this thread, you’ll see some Text Mode code that makes reporting PTO time a little nicer. You’ll see discussions of the challenges of reporting on PTO in WorkFront. Have a look and then reply and let us know what other PTO-related questions you might have. Thanks! Eric

[NateBa]

Amy, Here are a few of the PTO related threads you may want to look into: Personal Time Off Has anyone figured out how to report time off. ..? Vacation Time Hopefully one of those threads will give you a little insight into previous discussons on the forum regarding that topic. -Nate Bagley --- Workfront Community Manager - Work Smart, Work Happy Message me directly at:

[DelphineCa]

None of the links work... :( Delphine Campes Director of Project Management & Marketing Campaigns Pluralsight

[nitingupta]

Hi Delphine, Here are the links "https://community.workfront.com/discussions/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?MessageKey=d5605ee8-cb58-42ad-b5a8-b5c3bacadd65&CommunityKey=aaafaff0-5e4e-4e38-8903-f1f990935567&tab=digestviewer#bm0"> 1. "https://community.workfront.com/discussions/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?MessageKey=d5605ee8-cb58-42ad-b5a8-b5c3bacadd65&CommunityKey=aaafaff0-5e4e-4e38-8903-f1f990935567&tab=digestviewer#bm0" Persona Time Off 2. "https://community.workfront.com/discussions/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?MessageKey=8cafd406-d815-4d4a-8075-7e61c3b4c2b8&CommunityKey=ccf3381b-a473-4ef2-9f81-4dd3244cf522&tab=digestviewer#bm0">Has anyone figured out how to report time off? 3. "https://community.workfront.com/discussions/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?MessageKey=c52f516b-b9d2-4a80-8166-3a14bbaaab96&CommunityKey=ccf3381b-a473-4ef2-9f81-4dd3244cf522&tab=digestviewer#bm0">Vacation Time Also, see the reply to one of above threads by Doug which has been endorsed by other community users " Hi David, Correct: for trasparency and reportability, I am proposing you NOT use PTO within Workfront, and instead use a standard project to record PTO. For best results, I also invite you to consider: - creating one such project per year (eg 2016 PTO) for everyone, ideally; or per month/business unit if you have too many people - establish procedures to have people book time as tasks on the PTO project: one task, one assignee, per PTO event (e.g. if Doug, David, Eric and Nate are golfing this Friday afternoon, that is 4 separate Tasks; and if Doug is also vacationing in Europe all of August, that is one other separate Task) - convert your current data to this PTO format - drop your PTO events (and create a PTO Exception report to highlight any that sneak back in the "old" way), to avoid double-counting and showing people as iver allocated - create a common dashboard called PTO; or "vacations", "kitchen calendar", etc. -- whatever best suits what your company calls it, for all to see within Workfront - on that dashboard, show the current year's PTO project(s) in calendar format - show people how they can easily toggle people on and off to visualize (just) what they need, or even make their own calendars (e.g. My Golf Games, My Vacation in Europe) - Bonus 1: because these are Tasks, you can add custom data, and show that custom data on the calendar - Bonus 2: this approach can be extended into a sophisticated Vacation Request solution(e.g. raise an issue to request a vacation, tie it to an approval path, then convert it to a task, etc.) - Bonus 3: AtAppStore has a just released a draggable calendar for Workfront...in case my golf game gets a rain delay Regards, Doug " Kind Regards, Nitin Gupta Work Management Australia

[melindal3825541]

Here's the text mode for a column you can use in user reports to show future time off Time Off Column. This shows all time off whose end date isn't less then today: displayname=Time Off listdelimiter= listmethod=nested(reservedTimes).lists textmode=true type=iterate valueexpression=IF({endDate}<$$TODAY,"",CONCAT({startDate}," - ",{endDate}," ")) valueformat=HTML -- Melinda Layten, Senior Consultant Work Management Improvement CapabilitySource Phone: (484) 505-6855 site: www.capabilitysource.com email: melinda.layten@capabilitysource.com - we simplify your work so you can run your business -

[BrookeVa]

Hi Amy. Unfortunately, Workfront's PTO didn't work for us. We actually created a PTO request queue where employees can go in and request time off and it routes directly to their manager for approval. We then built a calendar to show company-wide PTO broken out by department. We didn't want to use Workfront's PTO because there's no way for managers to approve, no way to "lock in requests", etc. If you want to pull in PTO requests to resourcing, you can convert the issues to tasks on the same project you use for the request queue and it will show in the user's overall allocation. I hope this helps! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or want more information. Thanks. Brooke Vaughan Rockfish Interactive Corporation

[RolandHo]

Hello Melinda Apart from what has been said above (and what inspires me to also think of a PTO project and abandon the Timeoff sheets) there are a few drawbacks with your proposed solution. 1) There are gaps in the list. I was led to believe that they are caused by the vacation days in the past. This we solved by putting in paragraphs ( ) rather than line breaks ( ). For whatever reason this works well in a single report, but not in a dashboard. It seems in a dashboard the spacings of paragraphs are much wider. 2) The dates are not sorted. I don't have a solution for that and that is the main reason why I will probably go for the PTO project solution. Roland Hofmann Atlas Copco Synatec (DGB)

[JimBr1]

" We actually created a PTO request queue where employees can go in and request time off and it routes directly to their manager for approval" How did you set up the request routing? I'm assuming you created a queue topic for the project and a routing rule to 'send' the request to the user.manager....but I'm struggling with the autoroute component Jim Brown FujiFilm Medical Systems, USA

[AdinaPi1]

We have an approval set up which is attached to any new issue. For us, we have the approval assigned to a team, which his composed of all the managers/leads. Alternatively, you can have the request routed to the Primary Contact's manager, as seen below. This assumes that you have the "reports to" field filled in on the user profile.

[JimBr1]

I was able to configure an approval process to the manager ID - I was trying to see if it was possible to assign the issue/task to the requestor manager via a routing rule - sadly I don't think that is possible Jim Brown FujiFilm Medical Systems, USA

[VicAl]

Yeah I don't think it's possible in native WF. But it should be possible through use of an API (or perhaps DDH has a tool). Vic Alejandro, PMP, CSM | IT | Sr. IT Project Manager Denver Water | t: (303-628-7262) | c: (303-319-6473) "http://www.denverwater.org/"> http://www.denverwater.org INTEGRITY | VISION | PASSION | EXCELLENCE | RESPECT

[AdinaPi1]

Yeah, we would also like that functionality as well ...to be able to route it directly to the manager. Right now only Team and Individual person are possibilities. I'll have to see if there is an Idea Exchange request open for this, then we can vote on it.

[AnthonyIm]

Hi Jim - I think it would be great to have routing rules be more dynamic like you have for approvals. However, I don't think that would work for PTO approvals. If you were to auto-assign the request to a manager, the issue would belong to them. You wouldn't be able to see the Issue in the resource grid or team working on calendar for the person who is actually taking the PTO. Just something to think about. Anthony Imgrund FCB

[jessiv20825291]

I'm having trouble figuring out how to set up an approval route that sets up the manager as the approval. Can someone provide a little more detail ?Thanks !! Jessi Volaric